Provider: - Institution: - Data provided by Europeana Collections- The previous goal of this research was to show that epic time does not have to function exclusively as “closed”, nor to hold “the island position” put against the other epochs, the opinion that prevailed in recent times when Serbian folk epic and Russian epic folk songs (byliny) were compared. The main method of this research is semiological, but when the reseached mingled with scientific, linguistic, literary scientific, antropological and other types of knowledge (different methodological points of departure), it inevitably took interdisciplinary character and lead to methodological pluralism. The main point of this research was to figure out the way in which time in a poetic narrative (narrative time) relates to the real (historical, i.e., objective) time, as well as the way it functions as biographical time of the character determined by sociocultural facts in which a variation exists, connected to different age identities. The starting point from which biological and social time measures is the birth of a hero. His birth as well as his origin is highly unusual. The period of childhood lasts relatively shortly. The liminal phase of the child is abandoned with his first achievement, or heroic marriage. The adolescent then acquires a new status – status of young warrior. Once the status of warrior is acquired, the hero spends the rest of his life in constant confirmation, more with every battle. Adulthood, therefore, functions as an unmarked (usual) maturity identity of the hero. By handing down his heroic symbols (the horse and the weapon) to his son, the hero renounces his status and becomes old. His leaving is accomplished in two ways – by changing the surrounding – becoming an advisor or a sage – or by dying whereby the unusual hero, in compliance with the the plots of the hero's death poems, faces unusual death. Bounded by birth and death, biography of an epic hero in a particular plot actualizes one of the (usually most important) moments of his life (the first conflict, marriage, etc.) weaving around this point the temporal foundation of the poem. Time in oral folk epic creates a very compound system of relations – both in extra-poetic reality and within the “epic time”. The first type of relationship is achieved with breaking through the barrier of the (recent) past in chronicle modeled poems, by introducing the narrators alter ego, a narrator – participant (i.e., by introducing the internal perspective of the text). Unlike the previous – mobility (before all – mutual approximation) of different biographical times of the characters who share mutual past – enabled different characters whose historical prototypes are severed by several centuries to act together. Appearance of particular characters in particular plots could be conditioned by historical setting, as well as by the fund of knowledge in the tradition, which create the role (sphere of interest) that the hero is going to play. Independently on the category of character, time in the poem reflects the agrarian calendar (a year is divided into two periods – summer and winter, i.e., St. George's and St. Demitrius' periods). These holidays split the yearly cycle, and all the duties were performed within that period – by connecting to certain saints – patrons of certain activities. That was also the time for paying taxes. This caused the hayducks to plunge the collectors, which was heroized into new plots. Since these holidays enabled winning a great fortune, activities of the hayducks is bounded by these holidays and proverbially expressed: St. George's day – meeting of hayducks, St. Demitrus' Day – hayducks' goodbye. Sacred character of these holidays and the sacrifice as a symbol, spring and winter, birth and death (in winter shelter, with unfaithful concealers) were interwoven into the epic narrative. Transposed onto the plane of daily cycle, symbolism of life and death was connected to the sun's movement, its rise, and occasional fade-away. Daily, weekly and annual cycles (the passing of time), constitute concepts of achieved time (past) and unachieved time (future), whereof past motivates previous events (their source and cause). The future opens new perspectives for further events and the destiny of the heroes, leaves clues, speaks the language of symbols (signs – omens, forebodings, and dreams), or displays images from prophetic books. The past was also enriched by the inserted episodes (i.e., the pre-fable) from the life of the heroes, and the future even crossed the boundaries of the plot and announced important epic biographies (like Marko Kraljević's). The rhythm of moving forward and backward broke the temporal framework of narrative time. The time of the poem is, in that way, invaded outwardly (towards the performing time), tending towards the final points that time measuring can express – the End of Time and The Judgment Day. Therefore time cannot be reduced to the sequence of isolated events, “locked” in the epic “history”. On the contrary – time in an epic poem functions as a complex network of relations, multiply overlapping and fruitfully interweaving different dimensions of the poem. Having as a fact that overall human experience is featured by narrativness and conceptualizes as a tale, it is logical that it does not pass homogeneously, but it “thickens” and “thins”. That tale can develop in continuity – from the beginning to the end, successively, or can flow with interruptions – diffusely and discontinuously. In both cases, shifts of narrative structure and development of the plot are accompanied by the change of location, connected with temporal succession of events. In that way, succession of aggregate spatial and temporal markers builds coordinates of song's reality. On the contrary, their abandonment, or random order, leads towards discontinuity of the temporal structure (i.e., forking of the fable) and, in the end, towards its (fable's) disintegration. Finally, it is possible that nothing happens (periods of uninformative sequences of the plot). By introducing the technique of “idle” time (sickness, imprisonment, waiting, overnight stays, length of marital proposal, etc.) uninformative parts of the plot are reduced. Therefore, this technique has a function of connecting the narrative cores, keeping the hero in the spot all the time. Close to this is the happy-end, which “freezes time” in idyllic scenery of hero's happiness and accomplishment, but also the scene of permanent unhappiness of the dead's relatives, in the ballad, which intensifies the feeling about the irreparability of the loss of the close ones. Thanks to the subjective experience of time – with its conceptualization – time is shaping to the taste of the listeners. Narrative time can “fly” or “drag” or “linger”, run in circles or eagerly progress towards the end of the plot (Lihačov), which influenced the process of its creation. The whole past diminishes the importance of single events, tends to bring them on the same level, with no reconciliation or clear time perspective. Events themselves become autonomous in relation to the flow of empirical time and go on together with the story. Therefore, the singing about the past events is insensitive to the “objective” changes of time, and different narrative sequences accordingly relate in temporal and spatial coordinates in most various ways. In the conclusion we may say that well-known (or imaginary) episodes from the lives of famous people are shaped into their own temporality, and passed down during generations, according to the poetics of singing.- Prvobitni cilj ovog istraživanja bio je pokazati da epsko vreme ne mora funkcionisati kao isključivo kao „zatvoreno“, niti zauzimati „ostrvski položaj“ u odnosu na druge epohe, kako se to obično smatralo, pri neopravdanoj analogiji srpske epike i ruskih biljina. Osnovna metoda ovog istraživanja je semiotička, a kada se istraživanje ukrštalo s naučnim, lingvističkim, književnonaučnim, antropološkim, i drugim saznanjima (različitim metodološkim polazištima), neminovno je poprimalo interdosciplinarni karakter i vodilo je ka metodološkom pluralizmu. Predmet istraživanja bio je razmotriti kako se vreme u pesmi (narativno vreme) konstituiše u poređenju s realno postojećim (istorijskim, tj. objektivnim) vremenom, kao i to kako ono funkcioniše na ravni biografskog vremena lika, određenog pre svega sociokulturnim realijama društva u kome varijanta egzistira, vezanim za različite uzrasne identitete. Početna tačka od koje se dalje samerava biološko i socijalno vreme je rođenje junaka, koje je, po pravilu, nesvakidašnje, kao, uostalom, i njegovo poreklo. Detinjstvo traje srazmerno kratko, a prevazilaženje liminalnog statusa deteta ostvaruje se prvim podvigom, odnosno junačkom ženidbom, čime se junaku adolescentu obezbeđuje novi status – mladog ratnika. Kada jednom osvoji status ratnika, glavni junak ostatak života provodi u njegovom stalnom potvrđivanju i dokazivanju, iz jednog podviga u drugi. Zrelo doba, stoga, funkcioniše kao nemarkirani (uobičajeni) uzrasni identitet junaka. Predavanjem junačkih atributa (konja i oružja) sinu, junak se odriče svog statusa i prelazi u kategoriju starih lica. Izlazak iz ratničkog statusa ostvaruje se na dva načina – promenom delokruga – ulaskom u delokrug savetnika (mudraca), ili odlaskom u smrt, pri čemu će neobičnom junaku, saobrazno sižeima pesama o smrti junaka, odgovarati „neobična“ smrt. Ograničena rođenjem i smrću, biografija epskog junaka, u konkretnom sižeu, aktualizovaće jedan od (obično najvažnijih) trenutaka iz života lika (prvi sukob, ženidbu i sl), pletući oko ove tačke vremensku armaturu pesme. Pritom, vreme u usmenoj epici gradi vrlo složen sistem relacija – kako sa vanpoetskom stvarnošću, tako i u pogledu vremenskog približavanja različitih, međusobno vremenski udaljenih događaja i likova unutar „epskog vremena“. Prvi tip odnosa postiže se razbijanjem rampe